I don’t very much care who pulls the strings, so long as the puppet show is homegrown.

The puppet master here would be the broadcaster, domestic- or foreign-owned, and the puppet show is programming, preferably as Canadian as possible.

The prickly matter of foreign ownership of media will be in the spotlight on Sept. 5, when the CRTC begins a public hearing on the proposed acquisition of Alliance Atlantis Communications by Goldman Sachs Capital Partners and CanWest Global.

Representatives from the production community will be there to voice their objection to the deal, which would see U.S. private equity firm Goldman Sachs gain a substantial stake in one of Canada’s two largest broadcast entities. Just how big a stake – or how much control it might give them – remains a mystery in this murky deal dependent on Global Television’s future performance.

Folks inside the private broadcasting sector by and large don’t object to foreign ownership. To them, being bought into – or purchased outright – by deep-pocketed offshore investors would only make them salivate over the prospect of a boost in resources or the premium rate they could get for cashing in their shares.

But it sure plays on the worst fears of those who make domestic television – a group that has already been hard hit in the past eight years.

Foreign ownership is not seen as outlandish elsewhere. Look no further than the international interests of CanWest itself, which is looking to upgrade to a controlling stake in Australia’s Network Ten. Coincidentally, it was recently reported that the CRTC is looking at regulation in Australia as a potential model for dealing with media mergers and takeovers here at home. While the main focus is a formula by which the Aussies calculate acceptable levels of media concentration, it would be interesting to hear what the commission feels about that country’s looser attitude toward foreign ownership.

Strong nationalist feelings about our public airwaves are understandable, given that we struggle to maintain our independence and cultural identity while bordering the most powerful media nation in the world. But is the owner of a media company who holds a foreign passport necessarily any more of a threat to Cancon than one who is Canadian yet spends hundreds of millions of dollars on U.S. programming, at the expense of a more robust domestic lineup?

An optimist might think that Global and Goldman Sachs, aware of the local sensitivity over foreign involvement, would, if given the regulatory go-ahead, back a ramp-up of the network’s Canadian programming as a gesture of goodwill. It is worth noting that Global, prior to the takeover announcement, had warmed up to domestic production, backing series including The Best Years, ‘da Kink in My Hair and (the now-cancelled) Painkiller Jane.

Then again, the WGC recently filed an intervention with the CRTC – as did the DGC and the Coalition of Canadian Audio-Visual Unions – prognosticating that this new broadcast entity would only meet their Cancon requirements in the most expedient manner possible in order to satisfy its ‘majority American investor.’

To get in the head of a broadcaster, I dug up comments made by Corus Entertainment president and CEO John Cassaday at the CAB conference back in 2001, when he argued that because his company had a strong contingent of U.S. investors, it was in essence competing with the likes of Viacom and Time Warner, making adherence to Cancon regulation unfavorable. The WGC might just have a point.

At this point it’s difficult to gauge whether the CRTC will allow the proposed AAC takeover to expand its limits on foreign ownership. But if it does, the commission is also there to protect Canadian cultural and industrial interests. Its new regime has expressed its desire for less overall regulation of the broadcast industry, provided the health of Canadian content is taken into account.

While the true test is yet to come, so far, under chair Konrad von Finckenstein, the regulator has shown that it means what it says and it doesn’t mess around, whether that’s been in telling CTVglobemedia to sell off the Citytvs, Shaw and Videotron to resume writing cheques to the CTF, or AAC to yank CSI: NY off History Television.

I trust, then, that if the CRTC approves this deal, it will also impose a rigorous series of conditions to keep the network committed to a strong schedule of high-quality Canadian shows.